Open source databases: the 97-pound weakling

Linux, Apache, JBoss, and other open source technologies are kicking sand in the faces of the big boys on the operating system and middleware tiers, but when it comes to the database world, open source is still a 97-pound weakling. And despite some heady growth numbers, that’s not likely to change anytime soon.

One big reason: Tool vendors have yet to catch up. “We advise clients that unless they have very strong IT resources, they should wait at least two years to think about deploying an open source database for mission-critical applications,” says Colleen Graham, Gartner’s longtime database market analyst.

Don’t take Graham’s words as a put-down of the products. They’re not. But Ingres, MySQL, and EnterpriseDB are victims of a classic chicken-and-egg phenomenon. Tool vendors, unlike the database developers, tend to work on a commercial model, and until they see open source winning more database market share, they don’t have the incentive to supply the software and enterprise needs for disaster recovery and other essential functions.

Even fast growth won’t easily overcome the tiny installed base

As a result, open source database penetration is very low; Gartner estimates that it has a market share of about 1 percent. Sure, it’s growing rapidly, but even after an annual growth of 43 percent a year for the next four years, it will still have a share of only 5 percent or so, says Graham.

Consider Ingres, which spun out of CA in 2005. Revenue doubled in 2007, but even so, the top line was a paltry $50 million. MySQL, purchased by Sun this year for a heady $1 billion, recorded revenue of just $48 million in 2007, according to analysts at the 451 Group.

Fred Gallagher, vice president of business development at Ingres, says his company is making progress winning customers for mission-critical applications, and points to DatAllegro, which embeds Ingres in its data warehousing appliance.

Larger companies simply aren’t biting

A recent joint survey by the 451 Group and ChangeWave Research shows a good deal of resistance by executives responsible for database procurement. It found that just 8 percent of all respondents are planning a moderate or significant increase in open source database adoption.

But you can’t blame any cooling of the open source phenomenon for the weak traction of open source databases. Open source on the operating system, for example, sees continued gains: Linux was the No. 3 relational database OS with 15.5 percent market share in 2006, when it grew by 67 percent over the previous year, Gartner found. (Stats for 2007 won’t be ready for another few months.)

It also would be tempting to blame the anemic numbers on the faltering economy, but 41 percent of those polled (and remember that these are procurement executives) expect to increase spending on proprietary database deployments.

It’s also clear that adoption of open source databases is wide but mighty shallow. “A look at the typical workload deployments for open source databases confirms this. Open source databases are most likely to be used for small database applications, and 34 percent of respondents stated that their largest open source database stored less than 50GB of data,” the analysts wrote.

50GB? My iPod holds a lot more than that.

Meanwhile, express products by Oracle and IBM may well pose a threat to open source. The 451 Group survey found that adoption of express databases is strong in the enterprise — Oracle Express has an adoption rate of 13 percent among businesses with more than 1,000 employees — but much weaker in smaller businesses.

“One way to read this is that the Express and open source products do not compete directly, since Express products are more likely to be deployed by larger enterprises and open source products by smaller enterprises. Another way to read this is that in fact the adoption of Express databases by larger customers has been at the expense of open source databases,” said the 451 Group.

The investors show they believe in the potential

Before anyone relegates open source databases to technology’s dustbin, it’s worth remembering that despite all of the Silicon Valley nonsense about “The Art of War,” a successful business does not have to annihilate the enemy. What it has to do is make money.

It’s not clear, for example, if Ingres is profitable yet, but with top-line growth of 100 percent, it may well be headed in that direction. Similarly, now that MySQL has the marketing muscle of Sun behind it, it could well do much better than it did as a stand-alone.

Indeed, venture capitalists, who have a very unsentimental view of the world, are pouring money into open source ventures at a record rate. VCs sent $204 million into open source during the first quarter of this year, more than double the VC funding that went into open source companies during the same period a year ago, according to the 451 Group.

Last week, EnterpriseDB announced that it had closed a $10 million round of venture capital financing with IBM, Charles River Ventures, Fidelity Ventures, and Valhalla Partners.

That’s heartening news. But don’t expect the open source guys to kick sand in Larry Ellison’s face anytime soon.

I welcome your comments, tips and suggestions. Reach me at bill_snyder@infoworld.com.